ChE130, Spring 2015 Guidelines for Reports, Presentations & Updates Requirements for Communication During the term, each student must: • participate in a 5-10 minute pre-proposal meeting; • submit a one-page project proposal; • write a two-part project plan; • submit a data summary for the tutorial; • two oral project updates with the instructors; • in a final presentation, present results, findings, interpretations & conclusions for the project; • in a journal-style written report, write about results, findings, interpretations & conclusions for the project. Pre- Proposal Meeting In this 5-10 minute meeting with instructors, you will discuss your preliminary project objective, constructs and rationale. Our feedback may cause you to revise your objective, prelim design and/or plans, so YOU SHOULD NOT DESIGN PRIMERS. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN THE RATIONALE FOR THE CONCEPT AND JUSTIFY THE NUMBER OF CONSTRUCTS AND THEIR LIKELY SEQUENCES. Shortly after we assign you a suitable project area that matches your skill level, experience and interests, you must ideate your own specific project objective. On Wednesday, April 1, 2015, Michael presented a few project concepts as examples, but you can pursue other objectives. First, you should identify what you want the system to accomplish, how you want a system to change its behavior, or what attributes you want to investigate. Then, you should identify which constructs will allow you to evaluate the system in a rational way. Although this assignment is not graded, we’ve found that performance on the next assignment is highly correlated with performance/effort for this pre-proposal meeting. To the meeting, bring one sheet of paper with your objective, rationale, and prelim list of constructs that focus only on the region of interest – the RBS or the promoter region. We don’t need the entire map. One-Page Project Proposal In this one-page project proposal, you should briefly describe your project and why it’s important, your objective, your design strategy, your characterization strategy, and expected results. You can use a font size no smaller than 11-point, and use a font that’s acceptable for scientific work. You should use top/bottom and right/left margins that are no smaller than one inch. You may use single spacing within a paragraph, but use double spacing between paragraphs. You may not use a second page or the back side of the first page. Everything must fit on a single side. YOU MUST ATTACH A SINGLE PLOT/FIGURE THAT SHOWS YOUR EXPECTED RESULTS. Page 1 of 3 Last Updated: April 1, 2015 ChE130, Spring 2015 Guidelines for Reports, Presentations & Updates Project Plan The project plans should be of a length sufficient to completely specify the information required of your system. For instance, plasmid systems should include all genetic elements on the plasmid so that it is clear you know what plasmid backbones you are cloning into and the complete set of components that make up your system. Primer sequences should include the sequence name, the sequence (in an orientation going 5’ to 3’), and a report of the melting temperature of the binding region of the sequence and an indication of the homodimer / heterodimer energies of the sequences. A construction timeline should provide a detailed outline of all the tasks that need to be performed each week in order to finish the construction by the indicated date. The outline of the characterization assays should include details on what assays will be performed, under what conditions, and on what constructs (including all controls). We will provide Word templates for both parts of the project plan. Data Summary for Tutorial Instead of writing a tutorial report, you will instead focus on generating excellent figures and captions. You will include figures and captions for the following items: • Gel image of PCR product; • Plate images showing colony growth; • Gel image of colony PCR product; • A graph showing the effects of arabinose on fluorescence. Each figure should have its own caption, and each figure/caption should be on a separate page. Project Updates You will have two, five-minute meetings with Prof. Tirrell and Dr. Vicic to receive individualized feedback and guidance to achieve project success. You should come prepared to discuss all details of your project and bring any data, images, figures, or plots that might be useful. You will either provide two handouts or submit an electronic version of what you presented. Page 2 of 3 Last Updated: April 1, 2015 ChE130, Spring 2015 Guidelines for Reports, Presentations & Updates Final Presentation Each student will make a final, 15-minute, conference-style presentation about his/her project, followed immediately by a five-minute period for questions. You should assume that the audience has a basic background in biomolecular engineering, but does not know the details or your project or your design. We provide a laptop (Windows 7 with MS PowerPoint 2010) and a projector. Even though you email your presentation to us, you should put your presentation file on a USB jump drive or on the network. If you use a Mac, you should check your presentation before your session to make sure special symbols and graphics appear correctly. Written Report Students will write one report for the project. This report should include no more than 10 pages of text and include no more than five figures. To meet the requirement of ‘no more than 10 pages of text,’ you must tell a clear and concise story about your work and results. To meet the requirement of ‘no more than five figures,’ you will have to carefully select and create a few meaningful figures and you should not include figures for all data that you collect. You should only present data and figures that are critical for your story. (NOTE: Tables do not count as figures. A figure with multiple panels of related data is counted as a single figure.) Remember, in the discussion section of your report, you should focus on why something did, or did not, occur. You should not just state trends. You should not just state facts. You should provide sufficient evidence, including trends, facts and data, in a logical fashion to support your claim. We will provide you with a sample report that you should use as a template for structure, writing style and language. We will also provide an accompanying handout that highlights important aspects of the sample report, including detailed helpful hints about writing (and presenting). Both of these documents are available on the course website as single downloadable file with the link title, “Project Report: Sample & Notes.” Page 3 of 3 Last Updated: April 1, 2015